First Grow - Indoor - Auto Bluetooth from MSNL

[Moshmen]

With what you got goin I’d start st water in at about 6.8 and coke the run off ec/ppm and ph so u have a starting point high ppm and low ph in the run may indicate salt/ nutrient build up in your soil mix . Which is my suspicion,

Another trick is to use a slurry test, this requires RO water but is another tool to help.

 

[Gashuffer]

With what you got goin I’d start st water in at about 6.8 and coke the run off ec/ppm and ph so u have a starting point high ppm and low ph in the run may indicate salt/ nutrient build up in your soil mix . Which is my suspicion,

Another trick is to use a slurry test, this requires RO water but is another tool to help.

Fair enough. Here’s what I’m taking away from your suggestion.

1. My next watering I’ll continue with my nutrients, but ensure my pH is 6.8.
2. If that doesn’t seem to change anything in the plants appearance, my next watering I’ll flush and see if I can get out salt buildups, as that may be an issue.

After each watering now I’ll be checking the runoff for both ppm and pH. So, I’ll at least have more data to help make decisions.

I haven’t flushed at all, and really my first few waterings I didn’t have much runoff. So I guess I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s build up.

 

[Gashuffer]

Here are the things I intend to watch to see if they change over the next week on each plant. Might be targeting the right things, but then again, I may not be! We shall see.

 

[Gashuffer]

So, change of plans. Over the past couple days I reflected back to what my purpose of this grow is. And it’s really just to learn and experience how the MJ plant grows. I don’t so much care how much I harvest at this point. Of course I want some, but my goal is not maximizing it. Maybe the next grow or two I’ll care more once I get into the swing of things.

So, my process for this watering was based on Moshmen’s input.

I suspended each of my plants above a larger bucket to collect all of the runoff. I delivered 4L of 6.8pH water to each plant separately and measured the runoff of each. Below were the results.

Water Supply: (dechlorinated tap water)
Volume: 4L
pH: 6.8
TDS: 156 ppm

Big Kai:
Volume Collected: 2L (aka soil retained 2L)
pH: 6.4
TDS: 672 ppm
Runoff Visual Notes: water looked pretty yellow/brown. But not cloudy. Was pretty translucent.

Little Kai:
Volume Collected: 2.75L (aka soil retained 1.25L)
pH: 6.4
TDS: 875 ppm
Runoff Visual Notes: water looked pretty yellow/brown. But not cloudy. Was pretty translucent.

Here was my setup.

I’ll put my thoughts on a separate post.

 

[Gashuffer]

So, here’s what I think this tells me.....

1. My soil pH is likely ok. I’m not 100% sold that this test was a sure thing. But at least the runoff wasn’t high/low. 6.4 runoff from a 6.8 supply seems ok. I’ve read it should be anywhere from .5-1 point off of the supply.
2. My ppm might be high? 800+ seems high. But, then again, there would be a lot of solids in the runoff from soil.

I’ll likely go back to my FF trio next feeding and see how the plants react. While being mindful of the ppm and pH of the water.

Knowing for certain the pH of my supply water is a huge relief on its own. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s any difference in growth or appearance over the next few days!

 

[Gashuffer]

Big Kai is for sure flowering. But, Little Kai still is not. Interesting the difference as I thought Autos were set on genetics. Little Kai is over a week behind Big now. Even though I had started germination at the same time.

I watered today, but with a very low dose of nutrients. 1/4 the recommended per the FF feeding schedule. I also used the week 5 for Big Kai and week 4 for Little Kai. The difference is that week 5 starts adding flowering nutrients.

Independent of the nutrients, after the previous watering/flush, both plants look much better to my untrained eye.

Both of their leaves have a uniform color now, opposed to the light green highlights that were present before. Also, new growth appears to be less ruffled on the edges. We shall see how they react to the nutrients now! But exciting to see them respond!

Here are some pics from tonight.

Big Kai

Little Kai, you can see a burnt leaf in the middle. That showed up after I flushed last time. It’s not new.

 

[Moshmen]

Numbers look ok to me and with your basis mix I would gues you could poor in 7.0 ph water and come out 6.4-6.5 it’s the buffers in soil mixture prolly gonna get higher in you as time hours by but ya keep doin what ur doin make those adjustments with your nutes and see what happens ?
How often ya feeding

 

[Gashuffer]

Cool. I'll keep going this route then. I'll keep fiddling with pH, maybe increase a bit like you said and see what happens next water.

Here's a screenshot of my log thus far. The feeding frequency has for sure increased as the plants got larger. Was every 5-6 days a few weeks ago, now it's every 3 or so. Orange highlights are with nutrients, Blue is just water.

 

[Gashuffer]

Environment update, I was noticing in my Wyze cam that my grow tent temp was climbing above 28.5C. Which from everything I’ve read is too high for flower. I had my exhaust fan at the highest setting too.

I ended up pulling the sleeve off of the carbon filter and noticed it was caked with this white powder. I assume it’s from the initial pearlite mixing? Who knows. Either way, I washed it all off and reinstalled the sleeve. Now I have the exhaust fan at the lowest setting and the environment is hovering around 24C during the day and 22 or so at night. Good fix.

likely a watering tomorrow. Right on pace for 3 or so days. Will gage the soil dryness depth tomorrow morning.

Here is Big Kai from tonight, buds are starting to get taller! Little Kai is still chugging along. If Big Kai gets too tall, I’ll likely need to put Little Kai on a bit of a step stool to keep pace.

All of my LSTing looks to be paying off with all of my bud sites.

 

[visajoe1]

raise your humidity, look up vpd

 

[Gashuffer]

Raise it to what?

 

[Gashuffer]

raise your humidity, look up vpd

Ok. So I did a bit of reading this AM on VPD. Seems to make sense. This is right up my alley being a Mechanical Engineer. So, I’ll run with it a bit and see if it makes any differences in growth rate here on my first grow.

I found a few charts that seem to align, but I’ll be using the below as my guide for now.

My grow room this morning at 8am, 2 hours after lights on was at 25.9C and 32%RH. Putting me with a VPD about 2.25 or so. In the “danger zone” according to the above, but well above many recommendations I’ve read for flower.

I’m running LED lights so my assumption is that the leaf surface temp is close enough to ambient. I’m sure there is a difference, but for now, I’ll run with that assumption.

If flower should be around 1-1.2 VPD, and my temp is pretty much constant as I have no HVAC and am totally reliant on the mostly constant basement temps, I’ll have to increase my RH to around 60-65%.

I do not have any automated HVAC controls, so my granularity in control is pretty crude.

My options fare:

Exhaust fan speed: High-Med-Low-Off
Humidifier: High-Med-Low-Off

My current settings which is achieving 25.9C and 32% RH is:

Exhaust: Low
Humidifier: Off

I’ll be changing to:

Exhaust: Low
Humidifier: Low

I’ll monitor the environment and see where it stabilizes. I’ll follow back up later today with where it lands.

 

[visajoe1]

atta boy! you're on the right track, just follow VPD, its what great growers live by. i highly recommend getting a cheap laser thermometer to check leaf temps. try not to assume anything (an assumption is just a lie we tell ourselves?).

run your humidifier full blast, you need to increase ambient humidity in the basement, since that is intake air source. I cant tell if your exhaust is going outside or not, if it is, then remember its a constant game of catch-up between your humidifier and exhaust. Your humidifier must have more output than your exhaust is removing from the tent/room.

i think you have a solid understanding of what temp/humidity you want to achieve, the fun part is figuring out how to do it. you'll get there!

 

[Gashuffer]

atta boy! you're on the right track, just follow VPD, its what great growers live by. i highly recommend getting a cheap laser thermometer to check leaf temps. try not to assume anything (an assumption is just a lie we tell ourselves?).

run your humidifier full blast, you need to increase ambient humidity in the basement, since that is intake air source. I cant tell if your exhaust is going outside or not, if it is, then remember its a constant game of catch-up between your humidifier and exhaust. Your humidifier must have more output than your exhaust is removing from the tent/room.

i think you have a solid understanding of what temp/humidity you want to achieve, the fun part is figuring out how to do it. you'll get there!

I am venting into the room. I’ve built a wood mount that fits into my window well incase the grow gets too stinky, but for now, the carbon filter is working.

My tent is inside the utility room within my basement. It’s not sealed ceiling to wall from the rest of the basement, but enough that it holds its own heat/humidity to the rest of the basement.

I have a humidifier that’s rated for 320sqft in my little 7sqft tent. Even the utility room is probably 150sqft or so. If I throw it to its max, the humidity will be too much even for veg. During veg, I had it there and it was in the 90% range.

Not surprisingly, my humidity came up and the temp dropped a bit over the past few hours.

On my low setting, the temp stabilized at 24C and humidity at 36%. I’ve now moved my humidifier to the medium setting. Will see how it stabilizes over the next couple hours again.

This is where I had it during the later part of the veg phase. I had bought this part way into the grow due to low humidity. I had turned it off during flower as I read a lot that too much humidity is bad. But, the VPD makes sense to me.

 

[Moshmen]

X 2 ! I have limited control as well and run that ragged edge of the “danger zone” lol some plants tolerate it some plants don’t you will notice a different upon ant improvement in vpd

 

[Gashuffer]

X 2 ! I have limited control as well and run that ragged edge of the “danger zone” lol some plants tolerate it some plants don’t you will notice a different upon ant improvement in vpd

lol nice. I don’t have the will to set up a better system yet. We shall see if that changes as I grow my other strains.

I have a couple more autoflower strains, a photoperiod feminized and a photoperiod regular. Im saving the regular photoperiod until the later grows as I’m curious to letting a male/female grow together and even crossing an auto/photoperiod. But, for now I have like 30 more seeds to go! Should keep me busy.

Update on the environment:

2 hours later and I’m barely there. 23C and 44%RH. Just about sneaking at the top range of the suggested VPD for flower.

My humidifier vents vertically and I think some vapor is just going right to the exhaust. I have moved my fan back on top of my humidifier so that it blows the vapor down. We shall see if this increases RH up to 50-55% or not. My problem is that the next setting on the humidifier is like ultra humid. I’d rather not go there as its like 2-3x more than the middle setting. At least based on how often I have to fill the gallon reservoir.

Here’s a pic of the adjustment.

Before:

After:
*Note* The environment hasn’t stabilized yet, so hoping the RH climbs a bit from what’s showing. The temp dropped a hair, so that’s a good sign that the humidity should climb.

 

[Gashuffer]

Update on the VPD adjustments.....goal VPD of 1-1.5.

started at:
Exhaust fan: low
Humidifier: off
Result: 25.9C - 32RH, VPD of 2.25

Adjustment 1, bumped to:

Exhaust fan: low
Humidifier: low
Result after 2 hours: 24C - 36RH, VPD of 1.94

Adjustment 2, bumped to:

Exhaust fan: low
Humidifier: medium
Result after 2 hours: 23C - 44RH, VPD of 1.6

Adjustment 3, bumped to:

Exhaust fan: low
Humidifier: High
Result after about 1.5 hours: 23.3C - 73RH, VPD of 0.7. Too low already after only 1.5 hours.

Adjustment 4, bumped to:
Exhaust fan: High
Humidifier: High
Result: TBD, will check before heading to bed. If the RH doesn’t get me to a better VPD level by then, I’m going back to low exhaust fan and medium humidifier for the night.

 

[Gashuffer]

Update, after 1.25 hours into the change to high exhaust fan speed, the temp has gone down to 22.6C and RH stayed at 73%, further dropping VPD to 0.68 or so.
I think the best I can do with my system is VPD of 1.6 for now with an exhaust of low and humidifier at medium. I’ll stick with that for now.

 

[Gashuffer]

2 hours into lights on this AM and I’m at 24.5C and 56%RH. Putting me right around 1.35 or so VPD. Hopefully it just chills there for a few weeks!

 

[visajoe1]

consider a variac, it will allow you to dial in your exhaust fan speed, and its easier on your fan motor. A 3amp version is plenty.

I run my exhaust at 50v, 80v, or 100v depending on the situation that day. Lately its been cruising at 80v 24-7